Omega Protocol is a futuristic version of Descent with some nice mechanics and big guns. What’s not to like?

Level 7 Omega Protocol to give it it’s full name is a fairly simple game that plays in a similar fashion to Heroquest/Space Crusade/Descent. You have an ‘overlord’ how controls the bad guys and a team of marines in a variety of flavours played by everyone else who must complete missions in a hostile environment full of clones and aliens. All pretty normal in a days gaming. What makes it a little different is as each marine takes an action they generate adrenaline points which at the end of the turn are handed over to the overlord to carry out their action. So the more you do in the marine turn, the more action points are available to the overlord to mess up your day.

The marines start with a number of different types available to them, soldier, recon, heavy weapons guy and so on. They also get to kit out their guys with a variety of equipment, weapons and armour before the mission starts. Then it’s off to zombie land and fighting their way to the objective which has thoughtfully been put in the furthest room by the overlord and in the case of this mission back again to a lift again conveniently at the other end of the map.

Movement, opening doors, interaction and shooting takes adrenaline points which are finite depending on whom you choose. The heavy weapons guy plods along armed to the teeth whilst the recon dude can run and jump like a happy elf. The overlord does their best to throw speedbumps in the shape of clones and aliens at the marines to slowdown and hopefully kill them along with some other unusual stuff like dropping a ceiling on them action points depending.

All in all it’s good fun, the adrenaline points handover is novel and we encountered a few room types we’d never seen before in this type of game (the noisy rave room was good). We of COURSE got a few rules wrong and it was a bit easier on the marines than it should have been. We also in tune with the group left one of our men behind who much to our surprise also survived. “No man left behind” is more of a Guideline than a code. We also threw in a few clichés like “Game over man” but since we had messed up the rules a little it was more of a stroll then a hard struggle.

Would I buy it? No. If I didn’t have descent I might but since I have I won’t. Just like Descent is a re imaging of Heroquest this is very much a re imaging of Space Crusade. The models are nice, not out of this world but nice. We didn’t get to see some of the nastier aliens but got a good ghost story about them. I’d definitely be on for playing it again. Shooting aliens is always fun, no-one lost an eye, then is was time for MrSaturday’s 40th